


sous la pluie, demain

by firewoodwander



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Canonical Character Death, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post Conspiracy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29845341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firewoodwander/pseuds/firewoodwander
Summary: In the beginning, Rex didn’t know which would be worse.
Relationships: CT-27-5555 | ARC-5555 | Fives/CT-7567 | Rex
Comments: 19
Kudos: 33
Collections: Clone Haven Ship of the Month





	1. Chapter 1

In the beginning, Rex didn’t know which would be worse—holding his husband while he dies in his arms, or knowing he, and only he, will be able see him for the rest of his life. He hadn’t dared think ahead to what the difference may mean, or entail, and now he’s sorely paying the price of underpreparation.

He doesn’t usually make it his business to interact with them. Not when he knows what trouble it could get him into. But the small, near-broken voice that calls his name when he catches himself staring too long at the translucent form of his late husband shatters that resolve to splinters before him.

“Rex?” Fives calls again, slightly stronger. He stands from his seat on the bed. Rex’s eyes follow him. That’s when he really knows he’s caught. 

“Fives,” he replies on a breath. His whole body slouches like a dropped puppet into the uncomfortable plastoid of his desk chair, and Fives falls to incorporeal knees at his feet. 

“You can see me, can’t you.”

Rex nods, scrubs a hand over his trembling jaw. “Yeah. I can.”

“And hear me.”

Fives’ hand trembles between them. For a moment Rex thinks he’s going to reach out, but then his fingers curl and he slumps in on himself, in relief or upset Rex isn’t yet sure. He wouldn’t blame him for being angry, though.

“Rex,” he breathes—or makes fallacy of doing. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Rex bites down on his lip. Lets the burn fester at the back of his throat.

“We can drive ourselves mad,” he finally settles on, hoarse, “but that won’t bring you to life any more than wanting will.” It’s the dream of a child, that things could ever be as they were.

“So you’re… You’re what? You’re just going to ignore me? Even though I’m _right here?”_

“No,” he argues. “That would be cruel.”

“It would be.”

“To both of us.”

“It would.”

“Fives—”

 _“Rex,”_ Fives interrupts. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I _died.”_ Rex flinches, more than he ever would have allowed himself if Fives wasn’t (hadn’t been) who he is. “I died,” he says. “I died, and I don’t think you’re dealing very well with that.”

When Rex drops his hand, both arms come up to curl around his middle instead. Fives watches him calmly, a little imploringly, looking just the way Rex remembers him from his heyday, not a hair out of place. He wears only his blacks, slightly desaturated with his lack of mass, and his goatee looks freshly trimmed. His tattoo is sharp, just like the glint in his eyes, and his nails are pristine where they dig into white-knuckled palms. Moreso than in life, when even after a thousand baths none of them can ever truly remove the grime that makes its home beneath their skin.

“I know I’m not,” Fives continues quietly. “Dealing, I mean. But I suppose I’m the one who died. Still kind of waiting for the _marching on_ part, you know.”

Thoughtlessly, Rex snaps out a hand to grab him. Even as he moves he hears the rational part of his brain sigh with disappointment, waiting for the inevitable disappointment of cold, frigid air as his hand goes sailing through nothing.

Except Fives is warm. 

Rex catches hold of his wrist and the rest of his thoughts are shocked straight from his mind. 

Fives is warm. Fives is _solid._

He stares at the hand, uncomprehending. Fives himself is gaping, clearly not wanting to have hoped. Rex certainly hadn’t wanted to try it before; trying means knowing, and knowing often means disappointment. But Fives turns his wrist in Rex’s nearly too-tight grip, less translucent, now, and runs a thumb over the back of his hand. It feels… It feels _real._

“Force,” Fives murmurs. He might be right. “This… This changes things.”

Rex nods mutely. He can feel the strain it takes on his whole face not to let his emotions spill up and over, to overwhelm him and Fives and throw them all off course. His grip slackens, but when he pulls Fives comes, rising clumsily to his feet and not hesitating to fall into Rex’s space, one knee between his thighs on the chair. He crashes forwards in a sorely missed, desperate and sorrowful meeting of lips that has eyes burning behind lashes and brows furrowing deep lines. Rex’s hands are everywhere at once, just wanting to—wanting to feel—

The heat of Fives against himself. The softness of his mouth, of the breath he doesn’t need fanning over Rex’s cheeks. Of the subtle roughness of callouses as Fives holds his face so dearly between his palms. The burn of his chest with grief and breathlessness.

When he slips his hands beneath Fives’ upper blacks Fives pulls back, lets him gasp, throws the shirt carelessly to the floor. It falls there and piles and is _real,_ and they both take pause to stare at it in a moment of logical disbelief.

“How is this happening,” Fives mutters, but at this moment Rex can’t bring himself to care. He pushes up until they’re both back on their feet, stood in the middle of the room, so Rex can press closer, pull him in, be consumed by the inarguable, impossible fact that Fives is _here._

“I love you,” he whispers. It’s the one thing he doesn’t remember when he said last, and it stings. “Forever.”

Fives grins. “Even if I do dumb things that get me killed?” 

Rex rests their foreheads together in kov’nyn, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “Even then.” When he looks up again Fives is smiling, painfully tender, and rubbing a thumb behind the corner of Rex’s jaw. “Though I do recall it was something very sensitive you were trying to tell us. Would you like to try again?”

Fives’ breath catches in his chest. He dips in to kiss Rex once again, amused when Rex chases him subconsciously. “I love you too, you know that?” he whispers. They’re the only ones in the room—or that’s what Rex thinks, but he’s been less trusting of that of late—and yet the furtiveness feels significant. Rex nods. “Do you trust me on this?”

“Of course,” Rex replies in full confidence. He watches Fives watch him, feels his body pressed whole and tangible against his own, feels the lack of pulse beneath skin despite the obvious bleeding warmth.

“I’m going to need you to do something for me first, and we’re going to need to find Kix.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clone Haven March Ship of the Month: Fex!  
> Week 1 Prompt: Ghost


	2. Chapter 2

Rex sighs as he watches another datapad disappear into the Aether.

“Did that go?” Fives asks excitedly. He looks around himself and then at Rex. “Can you see it?”

“It went,” Rex assures him. “I hope you can get it back.”

“Course I can.” He waves flippantly and screws up his face in concentration, and suddenly the datapad reappears. It slips quite literally through his hands and clatters to the floor. “See?”

Rex raises a brow. “I thought perhaps I didn’t need to specify  _ in one piece.” _

“Psh,” Fives waves again, already turning to grab Rex’s pillow—it turns ghostly as soon as his hand touches it and falls through the cot. “You have no confidence in me… Can we get behind this kickboard, or…?” 

Quietly mourning his lost pillow (and he had finally found a comfortable position for it after losing Fives, to boot), Rex holds out a hand from where he sits at the foot of the mattress.

“Fives,” he says. Fives looks over at him innocently, slightly concerned, and slides his fingers easily over his palm. Rex pulls him down to sit beside him. Fives curls into his side like he usually does, and for a moment Rex wants to pretend everything’s the same as it was barely a month ago.

“There’s a mark on my file from when I was a few growth cycles old,” he says into the quiet. “It says I had a propensity to create imaginary companions. That I would grow out of it. But I’ve never had any imaginary companions, friends or no.”

He discovered the word that fit them best when he was three. According to the Alphas, ‘Ghost Stories’ are shared between natborns in a friendly attempt to spook each other for the thrill of it. To be told that ghosts were the disembodied spirits of the dead… Well, CT-7567 hadn’t quite known at the time the difference between dead and naturally manifested or otherwise, but in the end it hadn’t mattered; the only beings he’s ever knowingly crossed in his life have been drifting souls long dead and not quite gone. And it hadn’t helped that CT-7567 hadn’t cared much for the natborns’ stories either, since he’d only really understood very few of them, and thought all were rather scarier than the real deal ever was. 

He’d wisely kept his mouth shut about the latter.

“Cody made it up,” he continues, “practically on the spot. Had to explain to the trainers why I was talking to empty air without making me sound defective enough to warrant a reconditioning—or worse. Called it an overactive imagination.”

“Well, I can assure you that I’m not an illusion of your imagination,” Fives murmurs over his shoulder. Rex smiles and tightens the arm bracketing his back.

“Hm… Sounds  _ exactly _ like something an illusion of my imagination would say.”

Fives elbows him. “Shut up, you.”

“Well, I think it goes without saying that you’re going to have to be careful not to blow it if you don’t want to create some sort of mass panic across the ship,” Rex warns. He turns to face Fives’ indignance head-on.

“I can behave!”

“I know you can. Which is why I’m asking you to  _ not _ try to play the hero.”

“Hey, ghost stories aren’t uncommon shipboard, either,” he protests pointedly, looking half-amused and half betrayed. “There are plenty of stories about things going missing or being moved in the Five-oh-First alone.”

“I know,” Rex placates. “I know. But I was listening, and I remember you said it yourself—this goes all the way to the top. We don’t know what minor slip could bring everything crashing down on us.”

Fives sighs. He curls farther into Rex’s lap and digs his nose into Rex’s neck; Rex runs his free hand through his curls and savours the feel of them between his fingers.

“I just want to protect you.”

“Okay,” Fives says quietly. “Okay. If we’re doing this, I might not be able to touch you, either. Who knows if anyone else will be able to see me.”

Rex snorts. “It’s not something many of us advertise.”

“You know any others?”

“Nope.”

“Damn.”

The pad on Rex’s right, the one he’d kept away from Fives’ experiments, beeps twice. Rex scoops it up hastily, feeling his heart lift with the happy green glow of a solid connection.

“I’m in,” he says, only slightly surprised. “It worked.”

“Holy—” Fives scrambles to untangle his ankles from Rex’s knees so he can sit up again. He scans through the scrolling data feed and then kisses the side of Rex’s head. “You’re amazing.”

“I know.”

“Cody is a genius.”

“Wh—hey!”

“I know he’s the one who taught you this.”

“Well…”

“Now, how do I find a specific medical droid, and more importantly how do I hijack his receiving transmission frequency?”

Rex takes the pad back and spends the next few minutes typing out a long string of commands, battling yet another firewall, and re-executing his request with fewer syntax errors. He watches Fives stand and begin to pace out of the corner of his eye.

“See if you can find one with a recent familiar name registered—Aay-Zee Three.”

“Recent?”

“We had a conversation. About numbers versus names. Don’t give me that look!”

Rex smiles and shakes his head, flicking through the logs. “Beginning with three, huh? I don’t know if it’ll be here… Would you recognise the number if I showed you the list?”

“Probably,” Fives says. He takes the pad from Rex and scrolls, scanning the long lists of numbers with enviable apparent ease. “Ah!” he exclaims after a moment. “This one.”

He hands the pad back and Rex carefully copies the designation of AZI-345211896246498721347 into an object. It’s not the easiest to locate the droid within the city’s facilities, nor access its communications, but as soon as he gives Fives the go-ahead the words are spilling from his mouth almost too quickly for Rex to keep up with.

“Okay, I need you to let him know that it’s me and that I need his help. We need to check if he’s had his memory wiped or not, if he will, and make sure he doesn’t try to kick us out immediately. So maybe something along the lines of—”

_ Fives? CT-5555, friend of Tup, CT-5385? This is most unexpected.  _

_ Apologies for startling you, _ Rex types out. He’s had to deal with Artoo enough to know to keep yourself on a droid’s good side.  _ You haven’t had your memory wiped? _

“Aay-Zee Three says he’s very surprised to be hearing from you, Fives,” Rex paraphrases. “And that they changed his memory reset to low priority, which means it’ll be done at the end of the month along with the rest of his maintenance check-up.”

“Oh,” Fives says. He stops, swallows. Visibly gathers himself and files his emotions away behind his professionalism. “Well, better be quick. Tell him I need any analysis he managed to do on the chips when we had hold of them. Everything from the Genetic Records Hall, anything he might have managed retroactively or before they caught us in the embryonic development chamber. Oh, and whatever he found out from there, too.”

_ Why do you need such data? _ the droid asks.  _ Is our investigation still ongoing? _

_ Yes, _ Rex replies.

_ But Nala Se confirmed that these were only behavioural chips. _

_ And I don’t trust her. What reason do we have to? I need some proof. _

As soon as the files appear on his pad Rex sets them to download. Only once the first has completed does he think to worry about viruses and trojans—he’d only had the time to set up a few strong but rudimentary walls around this entire exchange, and he doubts they scanned the files first. He can’t send anything to ask while the process is ongoing. He thanks the stars he had a burner pad to hand.

“Let’s hope the Kaminoans haven’t gotten a hold of him first,” he mutters. Fives takes up his pacing again, fists clenching and unclenching.

“Ugh!” he exclaims. “If only we could  _ talk _ to him. This would be so much easier.”

And by easier, Rex knows he really means less worrying. Less guesswork, less trust needed. 

“You know we can’t,” he says gently. “Audio transmission would take up far too much of the datastream not to flag as suspicious.”

“And translating between audio data and machine code would take too much of Aay-Zee’s processing power, yeah,” Fives sighs. 

Rex nods. “Someone might notice something’s wrong.” He scans the files once they’re downloaded, checks for corruption, and responds with an affirmative for each he’s confirmed good.

“Anything else we need, Fives?”

“I don’t… I can’t think of anything.”

_ Thank you, AZI-3, _ Rex sends.  _ You’re a lifesaver. _

_ There is no need to thank me, Fives, as that is my primary function. I hope your continued investigation goes well. If I remember you once I’ve been reset, I would like it very much if you would inform me of the outcome. _

Fives drops back onto the bed beside Rex. His breath hitches as he reads over his shoulder, and he reaches out hesitantly for the keyboard.

_ You’re a good friend, AZI, _ he types. _ A good investigator, and a very good medical droid. I’ll be sure to tell you what we find.  _

The message registers as sent. He stares at the blinking cursor for another few moments before reaching out again.

_ Coruscant was scary, I’m glad you weren’t there. Don’t give them any reasons to disassemble you on Kamino and maybe we’ll see each other again soon. _

_ It is the smart choice. Good luck. _

Aay-Zee Three terminates the connection. 

Rex holds Fives until the shaking stops.

**Author's Note:**

> Come chat with me here on [tumblr!](https://firewoodwander.tumblr.com/)


End file.
